He is said to have been born in Balkh, today located in Afghanistan, and he eventually became a poet of the royal court, and was given the title Malik-us Shu'ara (King of Poets').

His Divan is said to have contained 30,000 distichs, of which only 2500 remain today. The following dialog between an eagle and a crow, translated by Iraj Bashiri, is an example. In it the King of Poets, Unsuri, compares his own status vis-a-vis that of a young poet who has joined the court recently.